Joycastro.com

Joycastro.com http://joycastro.com/ en-US Copyright 2012 Tue, 08 May 2012 14:26:34 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Letter from Seville
The HH and I settled into a lovely little one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of an old building in the Santa Cruz barrio, the old Jewish quarter. Our landlord is lovely, a man from Malta who settled here almost 30 years ago and whose apartments are filled with books and paintings and fascinating objects from his various studies and travels. Huge vintage posters of Ferias past loom over our little bed and the littler sofa, flamenco ladies with their dazzling eyes and snapping hand gestures and those swirling gowns.... (His shelves are full of books, too, from Virginia Woolf in Spanish to John Le Carré, so I already had the chance to read Le Carré's excellent and suspenseful A Murder of Quality.)

Our two tiled terraces, where we hang our laundry and eat our meals (when we eat at home) have views of the Alcázar, the Spanish royal palace that was previously a Moorish fort. When we sit out there, we can hear doves, the rustle of palm fronds, and guitars being played somewhere down below. An ancient aqueduct runs down the alley that leads to our temporary home.

My walk to work leads me through the Jardines de Murillo, beautiful gardens that edge the palace grounds. Green parrots fly overhead. People walk their dogs. A tall statue of one of Columbus's ships towers in the center. The walkways are paved, the benches are covered with small bright tiles, and the trees are dotted with bright oranges. Lush, lovely, scented--not a bad commute at all.

I'm teaching creative writing at the University of Seville, in a gorgeous old baroque building that was once the Real Fábrica de Tabacos, the Royal Tobacco Factory. It began production in the 1750s.

This is the building:

Three thousand female cigar rollers once worked within its walls; it was the setting for Carmen. Here's a painting of it by Gonzalo Bilbao that the HH and I saw when we walked to the extraordinary Museo de Bellas Artes. (If you ever go to Seville, be sure to visit this museum. Our landlord called it "the second-best museum in Spain.")

According to Bilbao's rendition, the factory looks surprisingly jolly. Today that same hallway is just a hallway, and it was empty when I walked it. The building, though, is filled with statues, fountains, little surprise courtyards, and arches everywhere. For security's sake, it was once surrounded by a deep moat (now empty) and huge iron fences (still there). From the window of my classroom, I can see palm trees. My shared office where I hold office hours has a low, medieval looking wooden door with metal studs all over it. It's all rather a bit more lush and romantic and mysterious than I'm used to.

My students are fascinating. They're majoring in philosophy, medicine, psychology, and advertising--yet they all signed up to take a course in publishing creative writing in English. Very ambitious! They've been working hard so far, and I'm excited for them.

Things are happening with Hell or High Water--the French rights sold, a starred review in Booklist, and so on--but it all seems very far away at the moment--which may be the very healthiest way to prepare for a book launch that I've ever heard of. I'm working on the sequel while I'm here, too, but more on that later. For now, I'm focusing on getting lost and wandering, trying tapas, sampling vino, and enjoying the time-honored ritual of siesta--which, dear reader, I highly recommend.

]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/05/letter-from-seville.html http://joycastro.com/2012/05/letter-from-seville.html on the move Tue, 08 May 2012 14:26:34 +0000 Thank you, Jimmie Killingsworth.

Earlier this spring, it was my great pleasure to give a reading at Susquehanna University's 8th annual Creative Writing Conference, but an even greater pleasure was hearing the stirring keynote lecture by distinguished professor Jimmie Killingsworth. Dr. Killingsworth has published extensively on rhetoric, the environment, and Walt Whitman (including the Cambridge Introduction to Walt Whitman) and is regarded as a senior expert in his fields.

He's a wonderfully moving writer and speaker, and his current work focuses on the most urgent environmental issues that face us. He also examines how nature writing and other kinds of literature influence (or fail to influence) environmental politics, which is a concern of mine with my forthcoming novel HELL OR HIGH WATER. When he kindly agreed to take a look at it--well, Reader, I was excited, but I was nervous, too, because I admire his work so much.

So you can imagine how excited I am by this generous praise, which he posted yesterday on Facebook:

I was lucky enough to get an advance copy and couldn't put it down. In addition to sneaking political substance into a "guilty beach read," as the article says, Joy sneaks a literary novel past the censors in the guise of a bestseller. Her sentences and especially her tension-laced dialogue are incomparable. The treatment of post-Katrina New Orleans is loving and ironic, evocative as can be.

Oh, wow. I wanna get a t-shirt with that on it. I wanna get a tattoo. When a Whitman scholar says your sentences are incomparable, you pretty much just kind of want to faint with happiness.

Thank you, Jimmie Killingsworth. You made my month.

]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/04/thank-you-jimmie-killingsworth.html http://joycastro.com/2012/04/thank-you-jimmie-killingsworth.html awesomeness Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:36:33 +0000 South Bound! Montevallo Literary Festival, and I get to go! Tomorrow morning, I'll be teaching a master class in prose, and in the evening, I'll give a reading--and in addition to reading a couple of trusty standards from Island of Bones, I'm excited to try out a passage from Hell or High Water that I haven't read before. (Novelists, how do you choose?)

I'm really excited about the chance to see the lovely fiction writer Bryn Chancellor. We met at Bread Loaf back in the day (okay, 2004), and she now teaches at Montevallo and made this all happen. Thank you, Bryn!

If you're in the vicinity, come on down!
]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/04/south-bound.html http://joycastro.com/2012/04/south-bound.html on the move Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:10:02 +0000 Behind This post goes out to everyone who has fallen helplessly, hopelessly behind on his/her professional, familial, social, physical-fitness, and/or other commitments.

You are not alone. I am with you.

I am behind.

I am trying to be all Zen about it, but honestly, that's only working about 63% of the time. The rest of the time I'm a little freaked out. What's more, behindness is starting to feel like a semi-permanent state of being. This is not an ontological development that pleases me.

[Here imagine a really elegant transition to the topic of writing, because I'm too brain-dead to craft you one.]

So. On writing when you are helplessly, hopelessly behind: personally, I'm not so great at it. If something is lying there undone--grading, prepping, laundry, packing, unpacking, thank-you letters to my aunts, forms to fill out for la foster daughter, the dishes (okay, well, not always the dishes)--I feel compelled to go do it. In order to write well, I feel like I need a certain amount of mental freedom, a cognitive blank slate, free for play, unburdened by those dozens of niggling responsibilities.

My only workaround, which I discovered after all kinds of trial and error, is to write when I wake up in the morning (in that foggy dream state where my head is full of weird, impossible places and deeply felt experiences I haven't actually had), when the fact that I'm an adult with a job and a family hasn't yet occurred to me. Which is why I've managed to write two novels now only by writing in the morning upon awakening. I kinda sorta just trick myself into the belief (aided by pajamas) that the world does not exist. I stay in a state of suspended animation until I get a pre-set amount of writing down on the page.

But like right now, at 4:43 p.m. on a Friday, when I'm fully cognizant of what needs to get done in the next 72 hours? Writing? Ha. Fat chance. Pretty near impossible. I mean, sure, I'll manage to do other things: things that demand less of the mind, less attentive wildness, less freedom, less playfulness. But write? No.

Just thought I'd tell you this, because sometimes I get intimidated by writers who are like, "Oh, yes, I set aside four hours a day to write in my study at my desk that overlooks Lake Superior, and I never vary." I think, Yeah, wow, I'd get a lot done, too. But in my own case, the fact is, whole days go by when I don't write. Days on end, truth be told.

Yeah, that's just how it goes.

But eventually there's time again, and mental space, and the words begin to emerge again, and they don't entirely suck, and then I get excited, and I'm off.

So take heart, writers who don't have an independent income or a butler, and/or writers who've fallen behind. I don't write every day or have a holiday house by the lake, but I've got two books coming out this year, and one (or two, with luck) more next year. You could do it, too.

--Uh-oh. On the other hand (Libras apparently are known for arguing with ourselves and seeing both sides, rendering us helplessly paralyzed when we have to make decisions--but that's another story), I've been publishing now in national literary journals for over twenty years, and I currently have only one book in print. Yep. A one-book writer. Not exactly a superstar.

What helpful lesson am I going to try to draw from this mixed bag of evidence? Hmm. Good question. (Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of this hat!)

I guess just this: It takes patience. It takes persistence. It takes showing up.

So keep showing up, in whatever form that takes for you. Keep coming back to your art.

Besides, to misquote Mary Oliver, what else have you got to do with your one wild and precious life?

]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/04/behind.html http://joycastro.com/2012/04/behind.html writing Fri, 06 Apr 2012 21:47:57 +0000 Judging Judge not, lest ye be judged. The biblical scripture is iconic, in settings religious and less so; it even showed up on Mad Men last night, embossed on an ad-man's portfolio. The episode was called "Judge Not"--which was a funny coincidence, because it's been on my mind lately.

When I was a child, growing up among Jehovah's Witnesses, the scripture was quoted often, but the primary interpretive thrust was that we should be humble and not judge others--which was confusing, of course, because we did judge others, all the time, for being worldly in a variety of ways. The way we used the scripture never made a lot of sense to me.

But as an adult, I've often wondered about the phrase as a simple truism, one that has to do with your own mind, your own process. That is, if you're the kind of person who constantly, unhappily judges others, such judging will become your mental habit, and you won't be able to help turning that caustic gaze upon yourself. And that will be painful.

At least, that was my experience for much of my life, and the scripture makes sense in that context.

I recently read two essays by Sally Adee, "Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus" and "How electrical brain stimulation can change the way we think," about transcranial direct current stimulation--introducing an electrical current (about the same as a 9-volt battery) into the brain of awake, conscious learners.

It immediately creates startling improvement. Learners become relaxed, totally focused, and totally engaged. They learn skills more quickly and with less strain. The mental state the essay describes--the focus, the concentration, the effortless flow--is similar to what Zen practitioners and long-time meditators describe. Electrical stimulation provides a way of achieving that state of "flow" so highly sought after by athletes and musicians. (And snipers, as one piece points out. In the sequel to Hell or High Water, Nola's therapist wants her to meditate in order to modulate the effects of PTSD, but she can't. She goes to the shooting range instead.)

If you've felt flow, then you know what a wonderful feeling it is. Why does electrical stimulation work to help people achieve flow instantly? "One possibility," writes Adee, "is that the electrodes somehow reduce activity in the prefrontal cortex--the area used in critical thought..."

Critical thought. That's interesting to me.

It's particularly interesting because this feels like the judging season. We're finally done with judging graduate applications and job applicants, and I've just finished judging my second writing contest this year. As a guest editor, I'm judging submissions to a special issue of Brevity. And of course, there's the weekly grading of my students' papers. And then, too, we all judge the arguments and/or aesthetic qualities of the published texts we teach. Judging/critiquing is a useful way to identify strengths and weaknesses, and as a society (and as writers trying to improve our own manuscripts), we need that. We need it when we decide how to vote, or where to live, or any number of things crucial to our well-being.

All of that's fine; it's kind of fun; it's my job; okay. It's one way of using your brain.

But many academics enshrine critical thinking, or judging, as the way to think. (Many people do, to be sure; I'm just surrounded by academics most of the time, so that's my reference group. And because, as academics, we're always using language that explicitly vaunts critical thinking, in order to explain and justify much of what we do as educators, our official esteem for that approach is always writ large.) We critique, critique, critique, and pat ourselves on the back for using that mode.

But then it becomes hard to turn the inner critic off. We find ourselves upset with others much of the time. Moreover, we judge ourselves just as ruthlessly. We imagine we are being judged by others. And then we suffer and are anxious.

Experience tells me this phenomenon is not limited to academics.

"My brain without self-doubt was a revelation," writes Adee, describing the experience of electrical stimulation. "There was suddenly this incredible silence in my head." Her "constant stream of self-criticism" just stopped. For Adee, the effects lasted for about three days.

I'm wondering if this "incredible silence" is what Zen monks pursue with such diligence on their zafus. To live permanently in a zone of effortless focus, tremendous effectiveness, and tranquility would be worth a few leg cramps.

It's definitely the case that critical thinking--assessing, evaluating, judging, analyzing--is one viable, useful, and tremendously important way to use your brain. I'm glad we've got it.

But it's only one way. There are others, and they can lead to greater peace. Acceptance. Love. Curiosity. Openness. Appreciation. Listening.

Just thinking out loud here, friends. Take care.

]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/04/judging.html http://joycastro.com/2012/04/judging.html culture & politics Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:00:58 +0000 Grateful

• the long spates of uninterrupted time this week to work on my second novel, BAD SHOOT, which I'll be sending off to my editor at St. Martin's this coming Monday. I'm at about 250 pages now, which is short, but there's still time.

• the kind feedback from and good points raised by all the commenters on my short piece, "The Dangerous Myth of a Room of One's Own," and the help of Tracy Seeley and Lorraine López as I was writing. I'm glad people are continuing to find the piece useful and tweeting it out there.

• this really nice (and really early!) review of HELL OR HIGH WATER at LitStack. Many thanks to the insightful reviewer, Stephanie Ward.

• the new IndieBound page for HELL OR HIGH WATER, so if you want to get a copy from your local indie bookstore, you can.

I'm grateful to all the people who are speaking up and speaking out about the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin and the problems of the "Stand Your Ground" laws in Florida (and elsewhere). I'm grateful that the Toulouse shooter Mohamed Merah can't kill anyone else, and sad about the way it happened.

Peace on the families of the victims. Peace on the families of the killers. Peace.
]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/03/grateful.html http://joycastro.com/2012/03/grateful.html culture & politics writing Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:12:47 +0000 Happy to be home profile by Mekita Rivas. Love it! Thank you, Mekita, for making me sound funnier and smarter and more productive than I actually am, and thank you, Las Comadres and Friends, for picking my novel! Because of the profile, HELL OR HIGH WATER saw a wee spike in pre-orders on Amazon, so that was cool, too.

AWP was a wonderful whirlwind, and I've been digging myself out from under the work that piled up while I was gone. I came home with two books I'm particularly excited about: The Train, a classic masterpiece of suspense by Georges Simenon, from Melville House, and Every Last Secret, a debut novel by Linda Rodriguez from St. Martin's.

I'm looking forward to spring break next week, when I'll be hunkered down, working hard on Nola Novel Number Two. I'll live in t-shirts and sweats all week, which will be awesome.

Tomorrow, a short piece I wrote, "The Dangerous Myth of a Room of One's Own," will appear on the #amwriting blog. I'm excited to be writing for them again, and this myth (long-time readers of the blog will know where I'm going with this) is something about which I'm passionate.

-----

Addendum: Here's the link to "The Dangerous Myth of a Room of One's Own"--with thanks to Joanna Neilson and Johanna Harkness for their comments!

]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/03/happy-to-be-home.html http://joycastro.com/2012/03/happy-to-be-home.html good news writing Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:53:05 +0000 Off to AWP! conference. If you're at any of these events, I'll see you there!

Thursday

Women in Jeopardy: Crime Fiction
10:30-11:45
Wilford B, Hilton Chicago, 3rd floor
I'm very excited about this one, especially since I'm now writing crime novels in which women are very much in jeopardy, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the panelists have to say about it all. I'm also looking forward to meeting Julie Hyzy in person.

A Pat Mora panel
12:00-1:15
Wilford B, Hilton Chicago, 3rd floor
Yes, it's in the same room as the one above, but no, that's not the reason I'm staying put. I'm a huge Pat Mora fan and have taught her work for years. This panel will be great.

OUR PANEL! Prepare to swoon.
1:30-2:45
Wabash Room, Palmer House Hilton, 3rd floor
This one is all about female modernist creative nonfiction writers: Virginia Woolf, Alice Meynell, Louise Bogan, Margery Latimer, and Meridel Le Sueur. Woolf, as you can see, is the only canonical one; the rest expand our concept of modernism and of the history of female-authored creative nonfiction. The panelists are creative nonfiction writers themselves: Tracy Seeley (who did a great Q&A about writing memoir here on the blog a while back); Marcia Aldrich, the long-time editor of Fourth Genre; and Jocelyn Bartkevicius, who edits The Florida Review and directs the MFA program at the University of Central Florida. I'm super-excited about this panel (which I think, with a few tweaks, could work equally well at MSA...).

Now, the panelists are supposed to go have coffee (read: cocktails) afterwards, so I probably won't make it to the 3:00 p.m. panel that I'm interested in, but I'll put it here anyway:

The Geometry of the Novel
3:00-4:15
Grand Ballroom, Palmer House Hilton, 4th floor
This panel will explore alternatives to Freytag's stalwart, sturdy pyramid, and how we can choose/develop structures that work with our material in more organic, exciting ways. I'm all for that, and I hope I can catch a bit of this. Moreover, I believe Debra Di Blasi is one of the presenters, and I'm a fan ever since she did the (downtown) omaha lit fest.

The Whole Truth
4:30-5:45
Waldorf, Hilton Chicago, 3rd floor
To tell you the truth, I'm sensing my own incipient burnout on the whole D'Agata controversy (though I love Dinty Moore's recent entry into the fray: " But I reserve the right to complain, and to call something a self-promotional manipulation, when I see it that way.") But anyway, this looks like a great panel. It stakes a claim (yes, art can be rooted in fact), and the panelists are all great people. So it's a maybe. Depends on how good those coffees are.

Pachanga for Pat Mora
5:30-???
Zapatista restaurant, 1307 Wabash Ave.
What could be wrong with celebrating Pat Mora a little bit more? Especially with tapas and friends.

And then of course you know all about Margaret Atwood at 8:30, so I won't belabor the point. I haven't seen her in person since I was an undergraduate, when she came into our workshop and eviscerated the short story of one of my peers, and I was at once admiring and horrified and so very, very grateful that it hadn't been my story on the docket that day. Presumably she will be just as terrifying from the stage. I look forward.

Then I'll be toddling home to crash in my dear cousin's luxurious guest room. His condo overlooks Lake Michigan. He's obviously the member of our family who made the shrewd financial decisions.

Friday

Oh, yeah!

The Cuban American panel (I forget the whole real name of it, but it's a good topic)
10:30-11:45
Private Dining Room 2, Hilton Chicago, 3rd floor
Ruth Behar and Achy Obejas will be on this one, so it's a can't-miss.

[Now follow several hours in which I'll wander aimlessly around the Bookfair, have coffee with friends that I will randomly bump into, and try to eat something vaguely nourishing--all the while chiding myself for not sitting quietly somewhere prepping for class next week--after which I'll head off to the next can't-miss event, which is (drum roll):]

Luis Rodriguez & Dagoberto Gilb
3:00
Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago, 2nd floor
Oh, I cannot freakin' wait to meet Luis, who is of course an amazing writer, an amazing community organizer, and an amazing human being, but who also has been so incredibly nice ever since last year when he gave a paper on an AWP Latina/o memoir panel I organized and then (due to the horrible blizzard) could not attend. Oh, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth! (Long-time readers of the blog will remember the sad little photo of my packed suitcase against a yellow wall.) And, uh, Dagoberto Gilb's pretty talented, too.

Flash Mob at the VIDA table, booth #308 at the Bookfair!
4:00-5:00
If you care about women's creative nonfiction, and especially if you write it, be there! (There will be candy.)

Then I'm going to the Prairie Schooner reception (thank you, Marianne) and dashing over for a quick bite with my lovely former colleagues from Pine Manor MFA program--again at Zapatista.

Esmeralda Santiago & Jesmyn Ward
8:30-9:30
Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago, 2nd floor

After which I'll presumably head straight home, without stopping off for drinks with any festivity-seeking writers. Because that's what a good cousin does.

By Saturday, I'll be overstimulated and exhausted and whining like a tired child, which should make me tons of fun when I attend the following:

A panel about writing YA lit for Latina/o readers (primarily because Sergio Troncoso will be presenting, and you know the severe writer-crush on him I've been nurturing for years now)
12:00-1:15
Astoria, Hilton Chicago, 3rd floor

A panel about teaching writing to migrant workers' kids (primarily because it will be fascinating but also because Linda Rodriguez will be presenting & I'm dying to meet her)
3:00-4:15
Lake Huron, Hilton Chicago, 8th floor

Then I will stagger back to the condo and fall weakly into the arms of my cousin and his partner, who'll be scheming up something lively for dinner and will forgive me for babbling incoherently about everything I've just quasi-absorbed.

They are nice, nice people. Their niceness cannot be overemphasized.

It occurs to me that there are a great number of events on offer this year for people with an interest in Latin@ writers. That's kind of a nice transformation. I don't remember there being nearly so many when I first started going to AWP. It's been a gradual ramping-up. There are tons that I'm not going to get to, too. So hey: good job, everybody.

All right. Off to pack. How will I shove all my jewels and silks into a carry-on?

]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/02/off-to-awp.html http://joycastro.com/2012/02/off-to-awp.html Latina/o on the move writers Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:17:26 +0000 Susquehanna!
I devoured a fantastic South African curry made by Glen Retief, heard an urgent lecture about the rhetoric of environmental writing by Jimmie Killingsworth, and stayed in the quiet, lovely, passive solar home of Gary Fincke and his wife Liz, who cooked delicious meals (and took me to see The Artist; I'd been remiss). I loved getting to meet and chat over dinner with poet Karla Kelsey and fiction writer Catherine Dent.

Sophomore Kirstin Waldkoenig did a practically professional job of introducing my reading, and another student, whom I didn't have the chance to meet, blogged kindly about the event. (While I'm on the topic of lovely students, let me thank Alex again for peeling the boiled eggs for the curry--that was an awful lot of eggs--and wish the dashing Shelby every good thing in her magazine writing career.)

HELL OR HIGH WATER had its debut in the Degenstein Theater, and that was exciting. I read some things from ISLAND OF BONES, too, and a couple of brief bits from The Truth Book. It was odd to read from books that aren't available; The Truth Book is enduring a lull until the new paperback comes out in September, and HELL OR HIGH WATER and ISLAND OF BONES are only available for pre-order. So there was no book table, no signing, but it was all still very pleasant. Terrific crowd.

What I'll probably remember most clearly, though, are the wonderful made-from-scratch meals that my hosts spoiled me with, the long walks alone, and the quiet, starry nights in the Appalachians.
]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/02/susquehanna.html http://joycastro.com/2012/02/susquehanna.html on the move Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:19:23 +0000 Work is Madness I'm in the weeds. As in, lost, overwhelmed, can you find me a lemon wedge for table three before they throw something?

In academia during this season, there are job searches, merit reviews, and, for many disciplines, the major annual conferences, which mean papers to write, performance anxiety, and the peculiar purgatory of winter travel. There are strategic planning documents to write and reappointments to do and hundreds of graduate applications to be read and ranked.

All my academic friends have tired eyes.

If you know any academics, be patient with them. They're operating on too much caffeine and too little sleep. They're not quite all there right now. Be kind. If you live with one, lead him or her tenderly off to bed. Talk in soothing tones. Expect little.

They'll be back soon.
]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/02/work-is-madness.html http://joycastro.com/2012/02/work-is-madness.html Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:33:20 +0000 The Ends of the Book: Authors, Readers, Public Spaces "The Ends of the Book: Authors, Readers, Public Spaces," you might want to have a look. It's a lecture that was given by Matthew Stadler at Yale's Beinecke Library this past January. An hour and twenty minutes long, it's an investment of your time, but everyone involved in publishing should see it, and so should every writer and every literary theorist with an interest in marketplace issues.

While the publishing industry convulses (mostly fearfully) about its uncertain future, Stadler offers some striking insights. Here are some choice passages:

The crisis in publishing is the collapse of the book as a commodity, as a nexus for shopping. That's it.

Reading can shape an economy. I call that practice publication, and I'm going to draw things in sharp contrast to clarify the practice. Publication is the creation of new publics through a culture of reading. Shopping, which is the prevailing culture of our time and which drives most of the choices now being made in publishing, corrodes or evacuates public. Real publication begins by quieting the noise of shopping.

Reading and shopping have never been a very good match.

For those of us who love reading, and who are sick and tired of shopping, this is a golden time indeed.

Publication is the creation of a public. It is an essentially political act.

Literary culture . . . is almost beyond the ken of those would like to manage it.

Literary culture and its economy have never been made better by convincing non-readers that they ought to buy books.

The quick changes, the premium on novelty, the need for a next debut novelist--once the last one has moved tiresomely on to their second novel--is not a happy companion to publication.

Publication is a political strategy.

It's interesting to me to come across Stadler's work at the precise moment that I've hired a publicist to make the most of my two forthcoming books' brief windows. My publicist is great, but her creative, clever ideas actually do link books to shopping. They're terrific ideas and have worked well for other clients. But there's something sort of surreal about them, too, because they have little to do with literature. They don't "quiet [ ] the noise of shopping" at all; they amplify it.

My experience thus far of publishing is that it's intensely dollar-driven. Which is not why I write, and probably not why you write. Yet I find myself getting caught up in the panicky logic of the machine: If this book doesn't sell well, no publisher will look at your next book. Short story collections sell poorly; write a novel. Your narrator's not likeable; no one will buy this. And so on.

How different from the truth and relief of a statement like this: "The crisis in publishing is the collapse of the book as a commodity, as a nexus for shopping. That's it."

That's it.

Stadler's lecture is a bracing corrective. Have a look.

]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/02/the-ends-of-the-book-authors-r.html http://joycastro.com/2012/02/the-ends-of-the-book-authors-r.html publishing Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:55:46 +0000 Stunning Forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press, September 2012:

]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/01/stunning.html http://joycastro.com/2012/01/stunning.html good news publishing Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:13:57 +0000 HELL OR HIGH WATER Named a Latino Book of the Month Las Comadres and Friends National Latino Book Club, for naming HELL OR HIGH WATER a 2012 Book of the Month!

A literary thriller, HELL OR HIGH WATER takes place in New Orleans three years after Katrina. The protagonist, a young Cuban American journalist at the Times-Picayune, juggles her friends, her mother, and the teenaged girl she's mentoring with her hunt for sex criminals and a missing woman. (Oh, and a little romance--if you can call it that.)

PEN/Faulkner nominee Lorraine M. López, author of Soy la Avon Lady, calls it "[a]n irresistible and compelling novel," and Dennis Lehane writes, "Hell or High Water is more than just a mystery; it's a heartfelt examination of a second America--poor but undaunted--that was swept under the rug but refuses to stay there."

I'm thrilled that the national Latina/o reading community is embracing this book. September 2012 will be the month when members of the National Latino Book Club across the country (special shout-outs to Miami, Austin, & San Antonio!) will be reading HELL OR HIGH WATER and when I'll be doing teleconferences for Las Comadres.

But you don't have to wait until September. If you pre-order it now, you'll get your copy by July.

]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/01/hell-or-high-water-named-a-lat.html http://joycastro.com/2012/01/hell-or-high-water-named-a-lat.html Latina/o good news Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:42:08 +0000 Grad Students' Q&A with Anita Mumm of the Nelson Literary Agency

Last year, the lovely and generous Anita Mumm of the Nelson Literary Agency in Denver answered questions from the graduate students in my memoir writing workshop.

This year, she was kind enough to do it again. (Different students, different questions--different moment in publishing.)

I particularly like the Nelson Literary Agency because they offer an alternative to the notion that everything related to publishing happens in New York. In fact, plenty of strong presses, agencies, and publicity firms work in the West, Midwest, and other regions. (Though I have a New York agent, my terrific publicist works out of Arizona.)

I particularly like Anita Mumm (photo by Daniel Hirsh) because she's thoughtful, knowledgeable, smart, and honest. Here are her thoughts.

Caitie Liebman: What is the most common piece of advice, guidance, or command you give your clients?

One of the most common pieces of advice our agents give to clients is to keep writing. Even after you've succeeded in getting an agent and published one or more successful books, there is no guarantee about the success of future ones. The market is fickle, trends come and go, and dozens of factors determine the success or failure of a given title. So if your goal is to make a living as a writer, treat it like a job, not a hobby. Finish your book, celebrate, and start on the next one. Incidentally, that's the same advice we give to writers who are having no luck finding an agent. Maybe you're just not pitching the right book.

Another piece of advice: build your brand. In other words, get your name out as a writer on your website, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Self-marketing is a skill that is becoming increasingly vital for writers, whether they are self-pubbing or working with a major publishing house.

Nicole Greene: What (if there is one) is the typical training/experience of a literary agent? What is your own educational background or training, and how did that lead you to work with a literary agency?

Agents come from a variety of backgrounds, but some things they often have in common are an English or Literature degree, a publishing course (e.g. a Master's program or other intensive course), and experience at a publishing house or other business linked to the publishing industry. I should also note that many agents are also writers; these interests go hand in hand.

In our case, Kristin Nelson attended the University of Denver Publishing Institute and worked for another agent before starting Nelson Literary Agency. Sara Megibow (associate agent at NLA) focused on Women's Studies at Northwestern University before becoming a literary assistant and then an agent. My background is in linguistics, French, and teaching ESL. Plus a lifetime of hard-core reading experience and passion for language. . .
I'm pretty sure that was what got me the job. :)

Kathy Samuelson: How long does it usually take for an agent to accept a client--assuming that the agent likes a writer's work?

In general, if an agent is immediately taken with a writer's work and feels there will be competition for it, she will request samples or a full manuscript almost immediately. So, the period between submission of a query and signing by an agent can be as short as a couple of weeks to a month. However, if an agent is on the fence (because she loves a project but questions its commercial viability, for example), she may continue to think about it for a few months. Most projects fall somewhere in between.

Laurie Weber: Do you ever take on clients based on a partially written work (memoir or novel), or would you always recommend that an unpublished writer complete his/her project before soliciting an agent?

Unpublished writers should definitely complete their project before submitting. It is extremely rare for an agent to offer rep based on an unfinished novel/memoir unless the author has strong publishing experience or is famous.

Vanessa Languis: If the author writes in different genres, does the agent represent all of his/her work, or are there agents that only deal with one specific genre?

Agents can't represent every genre (they would spread themselves too thin), so they choose several to specialize in. Most authors prefer to work with one agent, so I strongly advise you to do your research when deciding which agents to approach with your project. If you write in multiple genres, target agents who handle all of them.

It sometimes happens, though, that authors decide to write in a new genre later in their career. If it's a genre the current agent doesn't handle, an author may need to look for a second agent, but it is important to be honest and up front with both agents during this process.

Gabriel Houck: Are you aware of non-contract agreements between agents and writers, and is this a prevalent practice in the industry? Also, is there a market for agents to represent writers whose work is primarily short and not book-length?

No, I'm not aware of any non-contract agreements, and in general, I would not advise writers (or agents) to undertake one.

Yes, there are agents who represent novellas and short stories (especially collections). Nelson Literary Agency is not one of them, but you can search www.agentquery.com for a list of agents who handle these forms.

Wendy Oleson: What are the advantages to being outside NYC? How did you make (and how do you maintain) your connections with NYC editors/houses?

No subway trains to miss! :)

While all of us here at the agency love New York, we prefer the more laid-back atmosphere of the West (and our weekends in the Rockies!). Email and other technology allow an increasing number of non-NY agents to communicate quickly and effectively from afar with editors and clients all over the world (we can even Skype if we want the "face to face" experience). In addition to this, Kristin usually spends at least a month in New York every summer, meeting with publishers and editors and other industry professionals, and our staff frequently travels around the country and abroad to meet colleagues and writers at conferences.

~

Anita signed off with these final comments:

"These were great questions, and I was delighted to answer them based on my experience at a literary agency. For more information on agents and publishing, a couple of good resources are www.agentquery.com, www.publishersmarketplace.com, and www.pred-ed.com. Happy writing!"

]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/01/grad-students-ask-anita-mumm-o.html http://joycastro.com/2012/01/grad-students-ask-anita-mumm-o.html publishing Mon, 09 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0000 Which of My Author Photos Did the Publishing Experts Choose?
All of these unretouched photos were shot in natural light in the Creamery Building in the Haymarket in Lincoln. (Nicky enjoyed studying the author photos of the famous Marion Ettlinger in advance, though I'm afraid neither she nor I could pull off the gravitas of an Ettlinger.) If you know me personally, then you'll recognize the striped hoodie, which my son Grey left behind when he left for college--and which I'm wearing, in fact, right now as I type.

I sent all six photos to my agent, my editor, and the marketing manager at St. Martin's, so they could help choose the one that will be my public visual representation for the next couple of years or so. (Remember, this is a thriller they're trying to sell.)

Weirdly, all three industry experts--separately--chose exactly the same one.

Publishing mind-meld? Is there a platonic ideal of an authorial visage out there, such that they all simply selected the photo that came closest to it?

Which one would you choose? What do you think of the experts' choice?

If you're an author in the region and you like Nicky's work, shoot me an email and I'll put you in touch. I can't recommend her kindness, patience, good humor, and professionalism highly enough.

(The publishing experts chose the right-hand photo in the top row.)

]]> http://joycastro.com/2012/01/which-of-my-author-photos-did.html http://joycastro.com/2012/01/which-of-my-author-photos-did.html publishing Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:08:37 +0000